Honeybees live in social groups consisting of a queen, up to several hundred male drones, and thousands of infertile female workers. The drones mate with the queen only, and the workers protect the hive, forage, and feed and groom the queen. The health of the hive depends on the female workers performing these duties instead of reproducing. What roles do pheromones play in maintaining a functional beehive? Why might an alarm pheromone be more effective for triggering a protective response in a hive than signals that involve other senses, such as vision or hearing?

Video transcript

Hello everyone. Here's the next question how to smoke affect bees. Well you may have seen videos of beekeepers extracting honey from hives and they have a little container that spreads smoke around and um you see that the bees aren't attacking the beekeeper. So when we look at our answer choices we see that choice A. Says it makes the bees feel sleepy. Well it may look like that's what's happening but that is actually not the answer here. Um When a bee stings another animal it releases a pheromone called an alarm pheromone and that alarm pheromone sends a signal to the other bees and it causes them to come to that location and causes them to act defensively either. Um To charge and to sting. Well that alarm pheromone has a smell. It smells like bananas. And the spreading of the smoke can mask that alarm pheromone. So even if one B. Does try and sting the beekeeper it prevents that signal from spreading and causing all the bees to try and defend their hive. So we look at our answer choices. It's choice D actually which is it intercepts the alarm signal communication among the bees. So we can also eliminate Choice B. It intercepts the bees sense of sight. That's not what it's doing there. It's not site there depending on but the pheromone pheromone communication and choice see it kills the bees. No that is not the right answer. As beekeepers use smoke and do not want to kill the bees. So again how to smoke affect bees choice d it intercepts the alarm signal communication among the bees. See you in the next video.